


Lady In the Tower

by auberus, Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Category: Angel: the Series, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Don’t copy to another site, GFY, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 18:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19400098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auberus/pseuds/auberus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: Spike finds something strange in the Wolfram and Hart building while annoying Angelus, and finds himself an adventure with a Time Lord.





	Lady In the Tower

Romana leaned against the retaining wall of the roof, tilting her face into the wind off the ocean, watching the sun set over the water. Waiting until the last possible moment to go inside, footsteps light as she descended to the opulently decorated room that had been her home for the last... well, she'd lost track of the years. It didn't matter how long she was here, alone and isolated. The last of the Time Lords, locking herself in her tower, allowing only a few to see her, those who all but worshipped her.

Her feet sunk into the thick carpet as she padded across to the door that guarded her private sanctuary, heavy and well-warded. Unlocked only at her touch, at her desire. Solitude assured by those she'd bargained with when she fell, for some small measure of the technology she could command. A gift of time that allowed them to rebuild and restaff the tower she called her home.

She curled up a corner of her mouth in a wry smile, shaking off the thought as she rested her hand on the door handle. Composing herself before stepping out into a sitting room, as lushly furnished as her sanctuary, her gaze flicking around the room to search for any visitors before heading for the table laid out with a light meal. Grateful for the continued solitude, though there was always the chance they'd send someone up before she returned to her room.

Angel hasn't been on this floor before. There's a lot of Wolfram and Hart he has yet to see, and he's been filling the empty hours of the night by wandering the halls. It would, of course, be a more peaceful experience were he not accompanied most of the time by the ridiculous ghost of Spike, who is currently singing 'Henry the Eighth' loudly -- and off-key. Angel really wishes his irritating descendant were corporeal, if only so that he could administer the ass-kicking Spike so richly deserves.

"I'm--"

"Spike! Stop. Singing. Or I swear I will have you banished to -- I don't know where, but it will be very boring!" he threat of boredom is enough to earn him a bit of silence from his most irritating childe, but only a bit. 

"Oi. Prat."

"What, Spike?"

"That door. It's never been there before."

"You've been up here?" Angel sighs. Of course Spike has been up here. He has nothing but time on his ghostly hands, and nowhere else to go.

"Duh, to coin a phrase." Spike rolls his eyes. Angel really wishes he could hit the bastard, but he settles for opening the door.

The fork was halfway to her mouth when the outer door opened, and Romana raised an eyebrow as she set it back down, folding her hands in her lap. The man who came through the door wasn't anyone she'd seen before, and she waited patiently for him to introduce himself, and tell her why he had come to her. What her allies wanted now, that they had to send someone new.

"Who are you?" Angel demands bluntly. Wolfram and Hart has surprised him unpleasantly more than once with the things that lurk in the endless hallways. He's not interested in being surprised again. Except -- he can practically feel Spike rolling his eyes behind him. He steps through Angel -- which Angel *hates*, and Spike *knows this*. Spike's Victorian upbringing asserts itself at the most unexpected -- and inopportune -- times.

"Excuse the tosser," he says easily. "He's nothing but a jumped-up Irish peasant."

"You English bastard -- " Angel starts, but Spike is still talking.

"That's Angelus, Grand High Poombahz of Wolfram and Hart. For now. I'm Spike, former vampire, now a ghost. Which sucks, by the way. You are?"

Romana smiled at Spike, nodding her head at the introduction. It appeared she hadn't been in contact in some time, if they'd changed the man in charge of her tower. Though she was a bit surprised they'd put a dead man in charge.

"Romanadvoratrelundar." Her voice was soft, rusty with disuse. "What did you come to ask of me, Spike and Angelus?"

"It was kind of a hostile takeover," Spike says. Angel cuts in.

"I want to know what you're doing here, and who -- and what -- you are. Two heartbeats -- means you're not human."

Spike, to Angel's disgust, looks delighted.

"Did you say *two*?" He grins. Angel itches to smack the expression off of his smug English face. "She's a Time Lord."

Romana raised her eyebrows, sitting up straighter. It had been so long since she'd heard anyone refer to Time Lords, since anyone recognized what she was. Instead of thinking of her as a goddess, calling her a goddess. The demand from Angelus merely earned him a frown.

"You don't know who I am?" Still soft-voiced, through a little steadier, more certain. "Did you not learn from the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart? They built this tower for me."

"If so, they built it for their own purposes," Angel says flatly. Spike rolls his eyes again. Angel, for the thousandth time, wishes he could just stake the bastard.

"Wolfram and Hart never did anything that wasn't fuelled by self-interest," he says airily. Angel hates him all over again, not just for his personality -- which is obnoxious enough -- but for his English manners and easy grace, even when he's pretending to be less than he was while mortal. "How in hell did a Time Lord end up in Wolfram and Hart's menagerie? The Doctor would never have submitted to it, and his TARDIS wouldn't have let him even had he been willing."

"The Doctor?" Romana pushed her chair away from the table, stepping toward Spike, frowning darkly at him. "The Doctor is dead. They're all dead, all the Time Lords. How do you know what I am?"

She ignored the assertation that her allies had built the tower for their own purposes. It was what always happened. It didn't matter, so long as she had her tower, her sanctuary. Her solitude where she could keep the company of her ship, visited only by those who should think of her of a goddess.

"Where is Nathan? Why have you not been told who I am?"

"The Doctor's not dead," Spike says, "or he wasn't in 1996, anyway. He thinks he's the last one too, though. And I know what he is because he took me for a ride in that police box of his."

"Spike." Angel is trying very hard to stay calm. "What is a Time Lord?"

"Alien," Spike says casually. They've got two hearts, and the ability to travel about in time and space, so long as they've got a TARDIS." Forestalling Angel's next question, he says, "It's a spaceship. Stands for...time and relative dimensions in space, or something like that. The Doctor's looks like a police box, for some reason, but it's bigger on the inside."

Angel is, if anything, more confused by the answer than he was before.

"How do you know about them?"

"The Doctor took me on a trip with him. Well, several trips, actually. Brought me back to the moment I left, but we were out there for a good while.

It's typical. Angel spends five hundred years in hell; Spike gets to go gallivanting around the universe with an alien, doing god-knows what. He sighs.

"As for Nathan..." He shrugs. "I'm not sure what happened to him. No one even told me you were up here, much less who and what you are."

Romana's frown deepened, her eyes narrowing as she looks closer at Spike. Trying to decide if he could be trusted enough to reach out. To see if she could touch the Doctor's mind, if he really were still alive. Shaking her head after a moment, not willing to risk the pain of the yawning emptiness that she'd found when she'd first woken.

"It doesn't matter. The Doctor is just one." She turned away from Spike, looking over at Angel. Watching him for a moment, her head tilted to one side. "Nathan came before you did. Before this tower was built. There was another tower here, the same save for my sanctuary here. They call me a goddess."

"Do you call yourself a goddess?" Spike asks. There's a hard edge to his voice that Angel agrees with entirely. Glory and Jasmine had done far too much damage for either of them to be fond of anything claiming divinity.

She laughed quietly, shaking her head. "I call myself Lady Romana." There was no point to calling herself anything else, not in the privacy of her sanctuary. She accepted what they called her, though, never tried to change their minds. Content to let them see her as what they wished, at least in the past. "What would you call me?"

"A Time Lord, assuming Spike's not making things up," Angel says. Spike grins at her appreciatively.

"I'd call you beautiful," he says, "and if you're anything like the Doctor, bloody terrifying as well."

Angel narrows his eyes. Spike's never been afraid of anything in his life, and he has a thing for beautiful, terrifying women. Fortunately, he's incorporeal. It may mean that Angel can't hit him -- but it also means that Spike can't really hit on Romana, not and accompany his words with anything, at any rate. 

"Spike, you're a pig," Angel says. Spike pointedly ignores him. 

"Why do you have a name when the Doctor doesn't?" he asks instead.

"He has a name." Romana shrugged, sliding a glance at Spike again, curious a moment before she looked back to Angel. "I am a Time Lord, he's not making up that much. About the Doctor, I don't know. I haven't heard any of my people since they died. All of them, gone from my head, even the Doctor."

She turned away, settling back at the table, toying with her fork a moment as she looked down at her meal. "Sit with me awhile. Tell me what has happened in the outer world since this tower was built on the ashes of the old."

"When was that?" Angel asks, sitting down reluctantly, while Spike does the same with considerably more alacrity.

"And what would you like us to call you, luv?" he asks.

Romana frowned at Angel's question, trying to remember how long it had been since she'd shut herself into her tower. She'd lost so much time to her drifting, curled up in her sanctuary. "I.. don't remember." She pressed her fingers to her temples, forcing herself to focus on her sense of time, creeping back along her timeline toward the boundary between her old life, and her solitude here. Trying to remember, and forgetting there was another question asked.

"D'you remember what year it was?" Spike's tone is surprisingly gentle. Angel can't help remembering that the other vampire had been absolutely mad for half a year or more, tormented by the First. He hates remembering that Spike has a soul; sometimes he even forgets, when his childe is being particularly obnoxious -- and then he does something like this. Of course, Spike has always been a strange sort of vampire. His love for both Drusilla and Buffy had been deep and genuine, as had his love for Dawn, albeit a different sort of love. He'd even had human friends before being either souled or chipped, though not many -- and he'd never eaten any of them.

"Year?" Romana looked over at Spike, tilting her head. "No. I never asked. It's been so long..." She trailed off, still trying to remember. "There was another building, not a tower. They built the tower on its ashes. Ashes and blood."

She remembered the blood, the way it trickled between her fingers as someone poured it over her hands. Not all of it, that she knew, but she couldn't entirely remember what had been done with it.

"Well, it's the twenty-first century now," Spike tells her. "The last hundred years alone have been pretty bloody intense, if you'll forgive the pun. Two world wars, three if you count the Cold War, the fall of the British Empire, lots of averted apocalypses..." He sketches the history of the twentieth century for her, voice softer than usual. Angel tunes him out, listening to the sound of his voice rather than his words, wondering if maybe Spike will spend more time up here rather than down in his office driving him insane. Spike's thing for beautiful, terrifying women is even more marked if they're vulnerable, and there's something terribly vulnerable about Romana -- deep loneliness, and a sense that she's very lost.

"And the Master's foolishness, and alien invasions the Doctor averted," Romana said softly, those memories, at least, clear and bright. Better than those of the last... however long it's been. "I used to travel with him, and I remember his stories of his adventures." She looked at Spike again, smiling slightly. "I remember before I came here. Before the Time Lords died, before I was alone."

"You're not alone," Spike assures her. "The Doctor's alive. I might even be able to get in touch with him -- rather, Jack Harkness might, and I can get hold of Jack, anyway. And I'll keep you company even if Jack can't get hold of him right away. I'm pretty good company, and I've had some adventures of my own, some of them with the Doctor, even."

"Spike," Angel growls, "you're not to inflict your presence on Lady Romana unless she actually wants you here. It's bad enough that you drive me insane." He wants Spike gone, but he's not going to fob him off onto anyone else. The look of contempt on Spike's face says volumes, and he turns back to Romana, giving Angel the two-fingered salute before he does.

"Excuse the peasantry," he says, traces of his living accent colouring his words. "Vampire ghost or no, I wouldn't be so uncouth as to come where I am not welcome."

"You do it to me all the time!" Angel says hotly.

"Because you're an arse, and I don't care what you think, much less want."

Romana frowned at Angel for his command to Spike. "You cannot control who is allowed into my tower, Angelus." Her voice was sharp, an undertone of command giving it a steel that had been absent before. "Only those for whom I provided time may do so. And only I may say who may or may not enter these apartments. My sanctuary."

"Your home, your rules," Angel acquiesces, "but it's not Angelus. It's *Angel*," that vampire says. Spike rolls his eyes.

"He used to be Angelus, back before he got his soul. Doesn't like being reminded of the bad old days. New person, new name. I, on the other hand, am still Spike, soul or no soul."

"Unfortunately," Angel says, sotto voce. Spike, of course, hears him perfectly.

"Just ignore him," the smaller vampire says. "He thinks he's the boss of everything, even me.

"Because I *made you*," Angel tells him.

"No, Dru made me. You just taught me. Big difference, Peaches."

"It doesn't matter what your name is, only that you are here on my sufferance." Romana watched him for a moment longer, before dismissing him with a shrug of her shoulders. Spike intrigued her far more than Angel, and she focused on the transparent form of Spike instead. "You said you've traveled with the Doctor. What did he look like?"

"Dark haired bloke, kinda skinny. Sharp suit. Not half-bad looking, actually. About my...well, about the age I look, anyway. "He's absolutely mad, of course, but I quite liked him, even if he wouldn't let me eat anyone while I was with him." He scowls. "The sod. Anyway, he mentioned companions, a blonde girl and Jack Harkness. And he swore the TARDIS wasn't always a police box, but that it had gotten stuck that way somehow."

The description wasn't that of a regeneration she was familiar with, and Romana sat up in her chair a bit more. It could be a regeneration beyond those she knew of. A chance that Spike was right, that she wasn't alone. "I don't know who this Jack is, or who his other companion might have been. He has had many over his lives, and more than one have been blond." She paused, barely daring to hope that Spike was right. "You said you could contact him?"

"Jack?" Spike looks wistful. "I can call him. Can't go see him; I'm trapped in this sodding building. It's a shame, too. Torturous, even, having to see Jack without being able to touch him. Can't guarantee he knows where the Doctor is, but he'll know better than we do." He looks calm, but there's a hint of melancholy despair in his voice when he speaks that makes Angel wince. "Don't suppose there's any way you could fix this"?" He waves a hand through the table, sounding like a man who already knows the answer will be negative. "It'd be a lot easier to convince Jack in person than over the phone. He's running Torchwood right now, and he's got all sorts of things and people crawling out of the Rift over there and trying to wreak havoc on a scale Dru and I might have equaled once or twice."

"The Rift? And what's Torchwood?" Angel demands. 

"Torchwood's classified," Spike says smugly. "The Rift is sort of a temporal and spatial Hellmouth."

Romana tilts her head, her gaze sharpening as she studies Spike a moment. "I've never tried to make an energy being corporeal before. I don't know how to do it, but I doubt it's impossible." She pauses, a bit of a smile curling her lips. "Nothing's impossible."

She taps her fingers against the table for a long moment, thinking. Her mind clearer than it has been in a long time. "I couldn't do it out here. This is not the right place." Her TARDIS would be more ideal for trying to find a solution for how to make Spike corporeal, instead of energy.

"You really think you could?" There's a dreadful hope in Spike's voice, and an undercurrent of fear that makes Angel's stomach twist. If she fails, Spike will be crushed. "Can we do it now?" the other vampire continues. "It's --being stuck like this is the worst thing I've ever been through. And I'm a hundred year old vampire who's killed two slayers, staved off multiple apocalypses, and been tortured by a hellgod." He's practically shaking with anticipation and fear and desire, and Angel realizes for the first time just how much effort Spike is putting into not losing it completely. "I'll do anything for you if you do," his childe continues. "I'll find the Doctor anyway, but you get my body back, and I'll owe you anything you want."

That sort of promise is one she's heard before, familiar in the requests of those who come seeking a goddess. Romana watches Spike for another long moment before she stands, moving across the carpet toward the inner door of her sanctum. She glances back at the two vampires.

"You may leave, Angelus. Now." Her expression is full of the natural arrogance of her species, an arrogance she's forgotten, despite the adoration of those who have come to her before. Replaced by a different sort of arrogance, more artificial in nature, that of a living goddess.

"Come, Spike. If there is some way I can do this, it cannot be done here." She turns away, the door of her private sanctuary opening under her touch, revealing a glimpse of her room, and the wardrobe that her TARDIS appeared to be. Waiting for them to do as she had commanded, standing on the threshold between the rooms.

Angel is torn. He wants to stay, partly because he wants to punch Spike as soon as he's able to, partly because -- though he'd rather die than admit it even to himself -- he really does care about what happens to his idiot childe. He looks at Romana.

"If you hurt him," he says flatly, "I will figure out a way to kill you. And -- if it won't work, for god's sake, tell him as soon as you find out. Don't play with his hopes."

"Oh, Peaches, you do care," Spike says in falsetto, then sobers. "Thanks, Angel." As he leaves, he can hear Spike telling Romana, "He really hates being called Angelus, you know."

* * *

Spike looks at the Tardis, eyebrow lifted, trying desperately to play it cool, but he's shaking so hard he's having to be careful lest he lose control and sink through the floor.

He waits for permission before stepping into the TARDIS. The first thing he notices: "You don't have the Doctor's big rubber TARDIS-whacking mallet."

"I don't have a TARDIS in such a state of disrepair as the Doctor's." Romana smiles, closing the door behind her, the connection to her ship helping her mind clear, reminding her of why she rarely stepped outside once again. What she forgot, everytime she stepped out of her TARDIS.

Her fingers ran lightly over the controls, a silent apology for leaving her alone for so long before she begins her search. "I'll need the TARDIS to do some scans, to figure out the frequency of energy you've been turned into. It'll help the calculations about just how much energy and effort it will take to recreate a physical body for you." She moves with a simple grace, manipulating controls as she sets the parameters for what she has in mind.

"If you were a Time Lord, the solution would be absurdly simple. Although, you'd be simply a memory impression in the Matrix at that point, rather than an energy being. Relooming a body would make it simpler, but I have neither the equpiment nor the training to do so."

"Do whatever it takes," Spike tells her. "I can handle pain." He pauses. "I wouldn't even mind being human again, though I'd much prefer to be a vampire." If she does turn him human, all he'll have to do is sweet-talk Harmony into turning him again. He hates the idea of losing a century's worth of knowledge and self-control, but not half as much as he hates the idea of being stuck like this for eternity.

"Pain is not what concerns me most, at the moment." Romana adjusted another control. "It's the variables involved in recreating a body with a dual energy signature, but the physical parameters of the human body. And what precisely it would take to re-integrate all three without causing an imbalance that would ultimately cause the attempt to fail, either in the short term or the long term."

Spike gradually manages to puzzle his way through that bit. Technology is not his thing, and he has a feeling that this is way, way beyond the laptop in Angel's office that neither of them have any clue how to make work. Spike privately suspects that the only reason Angel can even turn it on is because he bribed Harmony into showing him how.

"You just...do your thing, luv," he says easily. "Hundred year old vampires and technology really don't mix."

"Why not?" Romana paused, letting the TARDIS run calculations a moment while she gave Spike a curious look. "I can't imagine you're entirely able to avoid technology, not with the pace of human development. Even if there are places where the organic manipulation of energy and matter are more common than mechanical means of doing so, they'd be far less common."

"I can't even work a washing machine," Spike mutters. "The fact that I can even change a lightbulb makes me an expert among vamps my age." He scowls at his incorporeal boots. "I can drive, work a phone -- a cell phone if I have to -- and that's really about it. I'm a vampire -- if it doesn't work, I steal another one, or make someone fix it. Angel's even worse than I am -- tosser can't even find an on switch if it's not clearly labelled -- but he's still better than most. We're living in a high-rise, not a crypt decorated with torches."

"Hmm." Romana tapped her fingers against the console, a speculative expression on her face. It bore more study, the fact that - at least according to what Spike was saying - vampires appeared incapable, or minimally capable, of adapting to changing technology. "Simply adapting to technology that you find necessary, and ignoring the rest? Or difficulty in deciphering the workings of technology developed after you became a vampire?"

A beep from her TARDIS distracted her, and she held up a hand to forstall an answer as she looked over the information scrolling over the screen, absently tapping her fingers against the console again. "I need to move my TARDIS, find a source of energy for it to recharge before I can make any attempt to recorporealize you. The energy requirements are far beyond the current reserves."

"More the adapting thing than the not being able to figure it out bit," Spike says, more than a little awed by the techno-babble. It's like Willow in high-speed, and whereas (as terrifying as Red's power is now) he's never been able to see her as other than the twitchy little girl he first met, Romana is frightening, and extremely hot. It's more than a little distracting. "I mean -- Angelus is learning how to use that cell phone of his, and I can do anything to a car that needs doing -- the rest of it's just not that interesting. Well. Except for CD players and iPods, and I can work those." He stops, going back over the last bit of her statement. "Wait -- you can do it? Really?"

"If I can find a sufficient energy source, it's possible, yes." Romana was already resetting her TARDIS to scan for nearby rifts that she could use to recharge it. Smiling slightly to herself when she spotted one that wasn't too terribly far from their current location. At least, on the same planet. A swift adjustment of controls to make the hop through space, rematerializing at the strongest point of the Rift, settling in to let the TARDIS recharge.

"There is a risk that it might not work, but if I modify a transmat with psychic buffers and an energy-matter convertor, provided with enough energy, I think it just might." What would happen if it didn't work, she wasn't certain. Though she imagined the worst that could happen would be that Spike would cease to exist, an outcome she didn't like the idea of at all.

"I'd say that was all Greek to me," Spike says dryly, "except I speak Greek. Either way, you'll have to re-charge without me. I can't leave the building." He smiles bitterly. "Apparently, someone wanted to tie me to Angelus -- or maybe just to Wolfram and Hart."

"Then don't try to step outside the TARDIS." Romana smirked, leaning against the railing around the console. "The dimensional transcendence of the TARDIS seperates the interior dimension from the exterior shell, and protects the occupants from any external influences. So long as you're inside the TARDIS, you're effectively protected from that clause of your current state of being."

Spike blinks. "I'll just take that as 'so long as I'm in here I'm safe', shall I?" He grins, wide and wild. He can almost taste corporeality again. "In that case, pet, what are we bloody well waiting for?"

"The TARDIS to acquire a sufficient charge from the Rift which it's currently parked in the middle of." Romana pushed away from the railing. "I should have a transmat in storage, and locating the rest is simply a matter of searching through what components I've collected. I don't have the sort of vast collection the Doctor does, but then, I haven't had nearly the amount of time he's had to acquire extraneous items."

She headed deeper into the ship. "You can accompany me, if you would like, though I don't know if you're familiar with any of the components that I'll require to modify the transmat to carry out the function which I desire it to do so. Of course, if I don't have them, I'll have to find an appropriate century where I can acquire them."

"That would most likely be a 'no'," Spike drawls, but follows her anyway. "Still, I've always enjoyed stealing things. If we're going to carry out a heist that spans centuries, I definitely want to be involved." That the TARDIS is already gone from Wolfram and Hart is an immense relief. It reminds him of the time he fell through the ice while skating. He'd been all of thirteen at the time, and when the air had hit his lungs at last he'd gasped and gasped for breath. That relief is remarkably like this one, the memory crisp for once even through the veil of two deaths and a hundred years as a vampire.

"I'd have to rig something to ensure you could step out of the TARDIS without invoking the clause that keeps you in Wolfram and Hart's main office, if that's the case, but that's rather a bit simpler than recorporealizing you. And I know I have all the components necessary for that in the TARDIS. Likely in the lab I intend to use for installing and modifying the transmat for it to do what I intend it to do."

Romana stopped at the lab first, digging through one of the drawers for her sonic screwdriver, muttering to herself quietly. "Just a simple dimensional isolation device, modify a personal shield to function on a frequency that will provide the same dimensional transcendence as a TARDIS."

Spike watches her wide-eyed. It's like his own personal vengeance demon, wishes granted almost as soon as they're spoken, and without the nasty side effects. And with the addition of completely incomprehensible dialogue. The last bit, though, he gets -- mostly due to the truly staggering amount of sci-fi novels he read in the fifties and sixties. Well. The early sixties, anyway.

"I'm incorporeal, luv. Might have a problem attaching a shield to me; I can barely manage to pick up a fag as is." Pens are about the limit of his capacity.

"You don't need to hold it." Romana continued to dig through the various drawers of the lab, assembling a handful of items on the workbench. Some of which were identifiable, others which looked like so much twisted junk.

"I need to adjust the field area, modify a power regulator, and connect a power source and the shield to a small anti-gravity sled and navigation slave unit, and it will follow along without you supporting it. And I can slave it to a simple homing beacon, which can be part of my outfit. Simple enough."

"I'd ask you to translate that into plain English," Spike says, "but somehow I doubt it would do me much good. The gist of it, though -- if I stay with you, I'm safe? Won't get yanked screaming back to Earth, or Wolfram and Hart?" It's as much of a relief as is not being in that bloody law firm in the first place.

"Or that if they manage to detect you through the isolation barrier, they'll have to collect both of us, and if I maintain a suitable link to the TARDIS, my ship as well." Romana smiled as she carefully patched the device she had in mind together. "I've never had to try something of this sort, so I'm not entirely certain of the effects under anything other than optimal operation parameters."

Spike blinks. Carefully. "I get the distinct feeling that if they do manage to get you and the TARDIS, they'll regret it. A lot." It's a lovely prospect, appeals to all the parts of him that are still vampire, and not burdened by soul. Of course, he sometimes suspects that his soul isn't exactly the same sort as Angelus', largely because when he imagines going on a killing spree through the people who have annoyed him lately, he feels no twinges of conscience whatsoever. Of course, it could always mean that William was more sociopathic than Liam -- which is entirely possible, but kind of sad. And that's always assuming it's their *own* souls they've got back in the first place. The whole thing makes Spike's head hurt.

"Oh, I imagine so." Romana looked up at Spike, her expression giving the impression of razor-sharp edges. "Despite their efforts to the contrary, I still recall the commander I have been, the war I fought and lost. It changes people, as I'm sure you understand."

"Never commanded troops, luv," Spike says lightly. The only war he ever participated in was the Second World War, and his experiences there had made him more than willing to spend the next two decades drunk and drugged out of his mind. He'd rather not remember them, but he owes her the truth even for trying to make him anything other than the ghost of Angel's wicked past. "Fought in one, once. That was enough for me." It had started out as a lark, and ended as a nightmare, watching humans do things to each other that demons would never have dreamed of. "Still, I wouldn't mind giving the Senior Partners one in the snoot. Or the gut. Or anywhere, really."

"I would rather do a sight more than that, but I will settle for undermining whatever plans they have, in whatever way I can. Starting with recorporealizing you." She turned her attention back to the device she was working on, making the last few connections before she clipped the homing device onto her belt, smiling to herself as she activated the device, setting it to hover a foot and a half to her right. Testing its ability to follow her, making sure that feature, at least, worked as she intended.

"There we are." She reached out to snag it, turning it off for now. "At least it should follow me as designed. How well the other function works, we won't find out unless we have to test it in an external environment. Though it might be simpler to do so, and buy what I need to create the modified transmat." Buy with credits stolen out of the nearest cash-point, she meant, as she had no qualms about using her sonic screwdriver to acquire any currency she needed.

Spike heaves an unnecessary sigh. Bloody conscience.

"There may be...problems. If I'm recorporealized. There's this huge prophecy about an Apocalypse, and a vampire with a soul. And, since I'm currently more deceased than usual, Angel's the only one who fits that description. Add me into the mix, and there could be major consequences." Not that he isn't willing to risk them. Anything is better than being a ghost, and anyway, he's never wanted to be human again, not even for an instant.

Romana leaned against her workbench, watching Spike for a long moment. "What does this prophecy say?" she asked quietly after a long moment. "About the vampire with a soul, particularly?" An apocalypse, she could cope with. Most of those things tended to involve little more than the planet they originated on, and Earth would survive. She was certain of that much, at least.

Spike rolls his eyes. The whole Shanshu thing is mightily irritating. "That the vampire with a soul will play a major role in the Apocalypse, and will become human again as a reward." He shakes his head. "The whole 'human again' thing seems to have turned Angelus blind. That, or the fact that he's never had any sort of real education. I can think of all sorts of seriously nasty ways in which that prophecy can be interpreted, and I want no bloody part of it. I don't want to be human, and I'm not interested in averting a fourth apocalypse. I've done my bit, repeatedly. All I want is to be safely undead again, thank you very much. Sod the Senior Partners, and their multi-dimensional grand plans for universal domination. That's Angelus' bit, not mine. All I've ever done, I did for love of a girl. The world can bloody well go hang."

There was silence for a long moment, Romana tilting her head back slightly as she turned over the information in her mind. Reaching out with senses that had long been neglected, tracing timelines as she weighed the choices. There was no sense of events surrounding Spike being fixed, etched into the fabric of time itself. Nothing that had to stand as it was.

"Let my TARDIS charge a bit longer, then we'll go acquire the necessary components for the transmat. No consequence is too great to be paid, unless you're really concerned about being the vampire that prophecy speaks of?"

Spike winces. "Only in that Angel's soul is a curse, whereas I went looking for mine, and won it in battle. If things are going to turn out awfully, then Angel's the most logical candidate. Then again, the universe has a seriously sick sense of humour, and a sacrifice with some virtue to it outweighs a cursed one any day of the week." He brightens. "Of course, if I'm not there, then it'll be Angelus by default. And -- " He shifts again. "It's possible I might not have my soul any more anyway. I gave something up the last time I died; it might well have been my soul."

It's the first time he's said it out loud. The battle for the Sunnydale Hellmouth had set him aflame inside and out, and he feels more like himself than he has since that bloody chip was stuck into his head years earlier. Saying as much, though -- it might well have put him into 'must be banished' category with Angelus. He doubts Romana will care as much, if at all.

"We certainly don't have to return to where and when we left." Romana smiled, pushing away from the workbench. "I think it may be a good time to travel again. I haven't done that in far too long. And I would enjoy company, if you're interested."

"Another whirl around time and space?" Spike grins, bright and genuine for what feels like the first time in *years*. "Count me in, luv. You couldn't tear me away, not after an offer like that one." And if there's a pang of guilt at abandoning Angel -- and subsequently Buffy -- to their fates, it is quickly suppressed.

Romana laughed, cheerful, and feeling more like herself than she ever has while hiding in the top of Wolfram & Hart's main office building. Free, and clear-minded and ready to take on the universe, if she must. Heading for the console room again, she checks the energy reserves. "A few more moments, and we'll be off. First to acquire the transmat itself, and with any luck, the rest of the components should be locatable at the same market. Or if not, I've a few different places and times in mind that should yield results."

*

"Lead the way, pet," Spike gestures. "Er. But I'd appreciate it if we could avoid that one planet with the people who look like big pink noodles. I didn't exactly make a good impression on them; I'm probably still wanted." He'd been very drunk , and had decided that taking a bite out of one of them was a good idea. They'd tasted *awful*, and gotten very annoyed.

"And maybe we should avoid that place with the red grass and the yellow sky," he adds after a moment's thought. "They weren't too fond of me there, either."

Romana shivered at the second, nodding her head in agreement. "I would prefer to avoid a place like that just on principle. Too much like home, when home is gone." Save that home was orange-skied and had silver-leaved trees to go with the red grass. "And I don't believe I've ever been anywhere that the residents look like big pink noodles, so I don't imagine that's on my list of places to go."

"There are probably a few others," Spike admits. "The Doctor annoys people almost as much as I do, and he's a lot nicer about leaving them alive than I used to be." He shrugs. "Kind of hard to kill anyone when you can't grab hold of them." He doesn't ask her about home, having learned better while traveling with the Doctor.

Romana chuckled, looking down at the console a moment, her hands still. "The Doctor always demonstrated a tendency to annoy the people in power, and trouble followed him pretty much everywhere."

She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before she moved again, setting controls, and plotting the course before she flipped the dematerialization switch, sending them on their way. "Four-hundred-second century, Devian, the technology exposition at Pru. I should be able to purchase a transmat there, new and top of the line for the era, and sufficient for what we need without being insanely expensive."

"I doubt he's changed much." Spike grabs a chair and props insubstantial feet up on the nearest surface. "That kind of thing's more a calling than a tendency. I should know. Annoying Angel's been a habit of mine since -- well, probably since the day I was turned." He smiles reminiscently, then tilts his head to the side. "So. What's this Pru place gonna be like, then?"

"Crowded, mostly human, full of the latest in technological developments being hawked, from personal electronics to industrial manufacturing equipment." Romana flicked another switch, keeping the TARDIS on a smooth flight path, an eye out for eddies in the Vortex. "It's spread over sixteen floors by size and purpose. The transmat should be on the seventh floor down, and I'll land us at the parking structure for that level. I'll arrange for delivery there at the expo, and we can do a bit of shopping for other components while waiting for them to package it up."

"Sounds a treat." Spike's a bit wistful that he won't get to shoplift, but there will be plenty of time for that once he's corporeal again. "Don't suppose they sell blood there?" he asks. "I'm probably going to be massively hungry after you fix me up -- I haven't eaten in a bloody long time. No pun intended."

"Not there, it's a technology exposition, not a general market. Pru, however, is a city of commerce. Few residents, several shops and markets and expositions of various sorts. " Another adjustment of controls, and a few more moments before she rematerialized them precisely where she'd intended to land. "After we purchase the transmat and the other technological supplies, we can take the public transit to one of the specialty markets, and find a good supply of blood, likely in a range of species and types."

"Human's best," Spike says. "The rest of it just doesn't taste quite right. And I'll probably need a lot of it. I died, and I'm not sure what kind of shape I'll be in when I get my body back." He sticks his hands in his coat pockets. "We will land in the right spot, won't we? The Doctor has a tendency to miss by a few centuries sometimes."

"Because the Doctor's TARDIS is old, in disrepair, and never properly upgraded or maintained after he stole her. And not always properly flown." Romana activated the device she'd created to allow Spike to come with her outside the TARDIS, the little shielding device hovering in the same position as before. "We'll stop at a cash point first, retrieve a credit token, and then head for the sales floor for the transmat. The other components will be a floor up, but there should be a lift to get us up there."

"The Doctor nicked his TARDIS? Excellent." Spike grins. "And he always got so shirty about my nicking things, too." He shakes his head, still smiling, and gestures at Romana. "Lead on, MacDuff."

"He's rarely paid for anything he gets, even if he professes to have the money to do so." Romana shrugged. "Though he's rarely actually stolen anything. Just managed to find a way to talk others into providing what was needed to do what he needed to do. And often was gifted with a jumble of items that ended up in various closets."

She made sure she had her sonic crewdriver, and the key to her TARDIS before she opened the door, stepping outside, hoping the little device did as she intended, and kept Spike from being dragged back to Wolfram and Hart, if they still existed by this time. Smiling at Spike when he joined her, locking the door behind him. The TARDIS had the look of a commercial transport of the century, blending in among the rest of them as a TARDIS should.

"That hypocrite," Spike says, mock-offended. He looks around, and can't help the wide grin that's spreading over his face. "Bloody *hell* but it's good to be out of Wolfram and sodding Hart." He looks at her, lifting an eyebrow. "Just how close to you do I have to stay?" he asks. "What's the limit on that thing?" He really, really doesn't want to go too far and end up back at Wolfram and Hart. It hurt enough to try and break the barrier that had kept him in; he doesn't want to find out what it will feel like to be torn back across time and space.

"It has a radius of about six feet in all directions, hovering three and a half feet off the floor, and I currently have it set to hover..." Romana adjusted it a bit, and checked the range again. "It hovers four feet from the homing device on my belt at the moment. It can be adjusted for nearly ten feet in any direction from the homing device that guides it, but further than that, especially here, the interference from other electronics will cause it to lose the signal, and you'd be trapped wherever you are until I come back."

"Or I'll end up back at that damned law firm," Spike mutters uneasily, making a mental note to resist the urge to wander off, no matter how tempted he might be. "Remind me to figure out who trapped me there and why, once I get my body back. I think a spot of revenge might be in order."

"There is that possibility, if the device looses power as well as the signal." Romana frowned a bit at that thought. "It should, though, have enough power to prevent that." She hoped.

Shaking her head a moment later, she nodded toward the doors that led to the main floor, and the cash point beside them. "Let me get our credit token, and we'll head in." It didn't take much, just a quick burst from the sonic to convince the thing she had an account somewhere, and it fed her a credit chit with an unlimited balance. The perfect accessory to a shopping trip.

"Excellent," Spike says. Time Lords -- well, the two he's met, anyway -- seem to have a rather flexible sense of property rights, the Doctor's scolding not withstanding. "Let's go shopping." He's not fond of shopping as a rule, and he hasn't done much of it since being turned, since the whole idea of paying for things is more than a little ridiculous when you've suddenly acquired the speed and strength to simply take what you want, but in this case, he's looking forward to it.

Grinning, Romana tucks her screwdriver back into her pocket, and touches the credit chit to the reader next to the doors, which open to let them in, and the cacophany of voices out for a moment, sliding closed behind them. Anyone who wanted in here had to have the money to afford to buy at least something on the floor they wanted on to. She knows where she's going, and moved through the sparse crowd with ease, heading for a brightly-lit booth near the center of the room.

There, a man was demonstrating the utility of the transmat, the ease of moving materials - living and non-living - from one point to another at the speed of light. She paused, watching for a moment, careful not to let herself appear too eager to purchase. All part of the bargaining, letting him approach her with a sales pitch before going back and forth on price and options.

Spike follows her, trying not to walk through anyone or anything while still remaining close to Romana. It doesn't exactly work, and he receives a few startled looks, and a few appalled ones. Ordinarily, he'd do it on purpose, to annoy, but he really doesn't want to do anything that might jeopardize their chances of acquiring the transmat, so he refrains.

Romana is aware of the looks, including a handful of dark frowns sent at her, possibly for having someone who is clearly non-corporeal on a leash of sorts, or simply for bringing him here with her. She doesn't really care what they think, focused on locating what she needs to get, and making sure she gets a decent price on it.

The sales pitch from the transmat hawker is the usual jumble of marketing speech and technical specifications she expects, and she listens politely before asking the price.

"For you, a mere six thousand standard credits, and a bargain at the price."

"Mm." Romana glanced at the device a moment, a skeptical expression on her face. She knows that they can go for far more and far less than that, but she's looking for a price at the lower end of the mid-range, another thousand and change credits lower. "Three thousand standard."

The back-and-forth of wrestling the price down to where she intended to pay is familiar and enjoyable, the challenge of getting her way without the other person feeling cheated. In the end, she pays a bit more than the fourty-five hundred she'd been aiming for, arranging for one to be packaged and delivered to the space she had the TARDIS parked in three hours. Giving her plenty of time to explore the next floor up in search of the modifiers she wanted, and maybe some components for maintaining the TARDIS.

Spike watches the back-and-forth, enjoying it. Bargaining's become a lost art in the West over the past hundred years or so, though it's still practiced in other parts of the world. Romana's quite good at it, and the salesman's not half-bad either. "So, what now?" he asks, once the arrangements have been concluded.

"Now we go up a floor, and do more shopping there, and come back, wait for the delivery of the transmat at the TARDIS, and then go looking at the selection of markets for those we need to visit to restock the TARDIS pantry for both you and me." Romana smiled at him, nodding toward the far wall, and the bank of lifts. "It shouldn't take too long."

"Sounds like a plan." Spike slides his hands into his pockets -- or maybe into the memory of his pockets. Romana's seemingly absolute confidence that she'll be able to restore him to his normal, corporeal state is beginning to convince Spike as well, and he's humming to himself as he follows her towards the lifts.

Romana isn't as convinced she's going to succeed as she's projecting, but she's aware that part of managing to get this to work is being certain there is a solution - and that she can find it, and make it possible.

The lifts, like the doors, require the credit chit to work, and the next floor up is quieter than the previous one, though there is still a certain amount of noise, simply from people moving around. The stalls are smaller, many of them enclosed and sound-proofed. The people who are on this floor tend to be more paranoid about coporate espionage, or simple abuse of their technology, and tend to keep their meetings with potential customers private.

And since most of this technology has applications that are dangerous or potentially destructive, she's not at all surprised. Here, she's not as certain about what she's looking for, and takes the time to slowly wander from booth to booth, scanning the brief descriptions on the outside of booths to see which ones might be useful to actually go into on a second pass through.

Spike trails after her, resisting the urge to stick his head into some of the enclosed stalls, though the temptation is considerable. This place is more interesting than Wolfram and Hart, but Spike has always bored easily, and the idea of stirring up trouble to relieve that always appeals. Later, he tells himself firmly. After you get your body back, mate.

"Here, Spike, this one." Romana wanted to pick up psychic buffers first, as those would have to be carefully calibrated to do what she needed them to do. And those calibrations were best done by the people who made the buffers - even if that wasn't quite what they called them. "We'll get the matter-energy converter later, those are easy enough to modify, and relatively cheap to pick up."

"You're the expert, luv," Spike says cheerfully. "I wouldn't be able to tell you about any of this junk if my life depended on it. I'm just following your lead." Nothing here is remotely familiar. "Now if we were talking magic, I'd be on more familar ground. Never practiced it much myself, but Dru did, and I've worked a spell or two in my day."

"I may ask you about that later, perhaps." Romana wanted to know what made her so muddled when she was outside her TARDIS at Wolfram & Hart. Or if it would extend to elsewhere, though she was fairly certain it would have a limited range, as she was as clear now as she was inside her TARDIS.

She tapped in a request for a demonstration of the product the owner of the booth had, waiting patiently for permission, in the form of the door opening, and the technician inside to wave them in. Nodding to the salesperson who was settled at the front of the booth as well, waiting for the door to shut before she spoke.

"I need a pair of linked psychic buffers, calibrated to my friend's dual energy signiture." Here, being direct is more likely to get her what she needs than waiting, unlike downstairs. The closed booths ensure few people go inside if they don't have a good idea that these people will have what they're looking for - or at least, something similar enough that they're drawn inside.

The technician's eyebrows went up, turning a surprised look to Spike a moment. "That... might be a bit of a challenge, and take time. Would you care to wait, or continue to peruse the expo?"

"I'll wait." Romana isn't about to leave Spike by himself here, and not just because the shield will follow her. It's safer for both of them not to be alone, even if she hasn't seen any sign of Wolfram & Hart here, ever.

Spike tilts his head, looking at the technician. "Can you do it, mate?" He knows the bloke can tell there's something different about him, and can't help wondering if the bugger can tell exactly what it is. Vampire ghosts aren't exactly standard anywhere; in fact, he thinks he's probably the first one. He settles into the nearest chair, careful not to sink right through it. He's gotten a lot better at it, but he's still not perfect -- as evidenced by the way his hand slides through the arm. "Bugger."

The technician snorted, rolling his eyes. "You're only talking to the best on Devian." He watches Spike's hand a moment before shaking his head. "I'm going to need a better chair for this. Wait here."

With that, he vanishes into the back of the booth, emerging a few moments later with a slightly different chair, and a pair of what looked like simple black boxes, oblong and matte, a handful of fine wires sprouting from the tops of each. He fussed around setting them up, twisting wires together, settling them in place along the rack on the back of the chair's head-rest.

"There. You shouldn't sink through that one, though it might feel a bit odd. Proprietary technology, though, can't tell you how it works, just that it should. Then I get the fun of calibrating a pair of these. Never tried that before, you understand, since any machine that uses a psychic hook-up doesn't do well with more than one. That I know of, at any rate."

He looks over at Romana. "I hope you're familiar enough with this sort of technology not to blow whatever you're modifying up in your face."

"The technology I am working with is capable of supporting the dual pick-up, and beyond that, you do not need to know."

"Proprietary technology, yeah." The technician nodded, returning his attention to the boxes and Spike. "Well, at any rate, let's see what we can do, shall we?"

"Have at it, mate," Spike says, settling into the chair. It's odd, feeling something solid against him again, but it's enough to make him smile. Hope is a two-edged sword, but right now it's cutting the right way. "It might help to know that I was technically dead even before the whole non-corporeal thing started," he adds. "Or maybe not." He shrugs.

"Living, dead, undead, corporeal or not. Doesn't matter, so long as there's a signal." The technician shrugs, picking up another box from the table along the side of the booth, muttering to himself a moment as he carefully opened it, making some adjustments to components inside before securing it at the top of the head-rest, and attaching it to the wires he hadn't twisted together already, nodding to himself.

"There's the connection made, at least. Let's see if the pick-up can resolve two seperate signatures, or if I have to get in there and readjust."

Spike watches, torn between boredom and fascination. He decides to go with fascination, if only because there's nothing he can actually do about being bored. He glances over at Romana and smiles. Hopefully, this won't take too much longer; if it does, the boredom will probably win.

Romana smiles back, watching carefully as the technician works, knowing the usual pick-ups for a psychic connection are supposed to touch the skin, though she supposes humanity could have figured out how to pick them up at a distance. They haven't, though, as she spots the almost gossamer net dropping from the one box, brushing against and through Spike's scalp.

The technician keeps his focus on the readouts of the machine, his fingers lightly touching dimples in the side where they're meant to go. Grinning as it shows an initial sucess, the smile widening as it continues to work, calibrating the buffers that will help shunt the connection - whatever they're doing with it, and however they'll pick it up, he doesn't know or care - from the pick-up to the machine while filtering the feedback.

"So far, so good. It is resolving two seperate signals, which is absolutely amazing. I've never seen this before, not even with those who have disassociation issues. You're really quite amazing, you know."

"I'd rather not be quite this amazing," Spike says sourly. "I'm a ghost who used to be a vampire; it's more than a little inconvenient." He frowns. Only two signals -- one for his ghostly self and the other for his demon, at least if he's understood what they're talking about. That probably means that his soul is well and truly gone. He feels a brief pang of dismay -- he'd taken one hell of a beating to get it -- but only a brief one. If it's gone, it's gone, and he won't have to worry about that bloody prophecy of Angel's.

"Suit yourself. I could write a paper on this." The technician shifted a finger, adjusting the feed a little when it faltered, nodding as it picked up again. "Be just a few more seconds... there we are." He pulled his hand away, the net retracting as he got to work removing the pick-up from the now-calibrated buffers, and very carefully removing them from the cradle they'd been in. "I'll just box these up while you talk to Jey about payment."

Romana nods, already handing her credit chit to the salesperson. She isn't going to argue price here, not for something this delicate and potentially difficult. It's only a few minutes more before she has the well-padded box with the buffers tucked under one arm, and the credit chit back from Jey. "Thank you."

"Oh, not a problem. You'll come back here if you ever need another interesting calibration like that done again, right? Because no one else will be able to do it half as well as I will." The technician grinned at them, waving a bit as they headed back out onto the floor.

"I'd say he knew his business, but I really have no way to tell," Spike mused. "He reminded me a bit of a minion I used to have. Scholarly type. I liked him, actually. Was quite peeved when the Judge ate him." He shrugs. Water under the bridge. "What next?"

"Energy-matter converters, and high-capacity wiring to connect it all in to the TARDIS." Romana headed straight for the other booth she thought would have what she needed, one of the few open-air stalls on this level, the equipment within all of it more upgrades of existing tech than truly new material. "The wiring we can aquire at a market, rather than here, after we load the transmat. I want to pick up a few other things here, but none of those should take very long, and all of it can be delivered directly to where we're parked."

"Convenient," Spike murmurs. He's starting to get tired of wandering about without being able to pinch any of the really interesting stuff that's on offer, but it beats sitting in the Tardis by himself. Or being stuck at Wolfram and Hart. "Don't forget, pet, we still need to get blood. Unless you're willing to kidnap someone for me to eat?"

"If the person works for Wolfram & Hart, I might just be inclined to do so." Romana wouldn't have done so before the war, perhaps, but between the stress of the war, and the way they'd muddled her mind when she'd sought sanctuary, she wasn't feeling particularly charitable. "But I've not forgotten, and at least markets are a bit more select in their range of products offered. It shouldn't take even all the time we've left before all our deliveries arrive at the TARDIS. If we find the right markets, even, we can place an order, and then just pick it up once the rest of our orders here are delivered."

"We could pretend they work for Wolfram and Hart," Spike suggests. "I haven't actually gotten to eat anyone in...." He tries to add up the dates. "Bloody hell, five or six years, at least." He doesn't count the ones he got under the First's influence. He sighs. "First there was that bloody chip, and then I was all souled-up and remorseful." He shakes his head. "What a waste."

"I'd prefer proof, myself." Romana paused as they approached the booth she wanted, the bargaining over the converters taking up only a few minutes, along with packaging and delivery to the space where the TARDIS was parked. "Or some other form of criminal, if you'd prefer. I'm not willing to pick out a random individual, however."

"I'll have you know I've always been very discriminating in my choice of victim," Spike says. "Well. Most of the time. A criminal will work, though." Anything, anyone, really, for a chance to use his fangs properly again. And he supposes that's the final confirmation that his soul has gone the way of the dinosaur.

"If you want someone not a criminal or working for Wolfram & Hart, you'll have to find them on your own time." Romana smiled a bit to take the sting out of her words, heading for the lifts again. Back to the TARDIS with the buffers, and then she tapped into the local network, searching out the markets she'd need, and placing orders for pick up before the orders she'd made at the expo.

Less than an hour after the transmat was loaded, they'd stopped at the last market, picking up human blood for Spike, though Romana made a mental note to stop at Wolfram & Hart long enough to scoop up an employee or two for Spike to snack on.

"That I can do," Spike responds, then proceeds to follow Romana until the errands have been completed. It's almost a relief to be back on the TARDIS again, away from the crush of people he can't eat and things he can't steal. Also, the realization that he's about to be corporeal again has him almost bouncing with eagerness. "Well?" he asks. "How much longer?"

"A few hours, while I connect everything, and make the alterations to the transmat I have to in order for it to work the way I intend it to." Romana took them back to the rift she'd used to refuel the TARDIS before, settling back into the place she'd been, a few hours after they'd left. "After that, perhaps a quick jaunt by Wolfram & Hart to pick you up some snacks?"

"Oh, that would be lovely." Spike doesn't bother to keep the desire for bloodshed out of his voice. "Maybe we can even stop in long enough for me to hit Peaches in the face a few times." He doesn't really want to kill the bastard -- if nothing else, because the sod's supposed to save the world someday, and soul or no, Spike's never been down with the idea of apocalypse. He still needs something to kill the intervening time with, though, because he can feel the excitement building under his skin, is almost ready to burst with it. "Don't suppose you've anything to read on this ship? I can manage to turn pages, if I concentrate hard enough."

"There's a library, though most of the books are written in Gallifreyan, the one langauge the TARDIS will not translate. There's a shelf next to the fireplace that should hold the books that aren't in Gallifreyan." Romana chuckles at Spike's enthusiasm. "I don't remember what all they're on, but you're welcome to read any of them."

"Anything's better than waiting without a distraction," Spike shrugs, then heads off to raid the bookshelf. The selection is wonderfully varied, including some detective stories from the thirties, but even that begins to pall after a while, so he pulls down one of the books in Gallifreyan. Languages have always been one of his gifts -- he picked up Fyarl, for god's sake, and half a dozen other demon languages besides -- and this is a seriously intriguing puzzle. He wishes he could find a piece of paper and a pen -- wishes he could use either -- but that will happen soon enough, he tells himself. He settles for trying to figure out the alphabet in his head, and is genuinely startled when Romana comes in.

Romana raises an eyebrow at Spike, waiting a moment before she comes over, looking down at the book he's looking at. "It's a manual on how to use and maintain the chameleon arch." She reached a hand down to trace a finger over the swirls and geometric patterns of the language. "I've finished the modifications. If you want to make the attempt now?"

"Yes." Spike closes the book and stands, the thought of imminent solidity enough to tear his mind away from even a new language. "I'm right behind you, luv."

The transmat is set up in her lab, buffers and converters on the pad she directs Spike toward, both of them connected to the TARDIS for the amount of power she's estimated is needed. "If this works right, once the energy builds up, all I should have to do is activate the transfer, and you should recoporealize on the pad over there."

Spike steps onto the pad, eagerness and trepidation equally strong in him. If he had a real stomach, it would be churning. As it is, he can't help wanting someone around that he can bite. "Okay," he manages finally. "Go ahead. Let's do it."

"Give it a moment to build up the charge." Romana kept a close eye on the monitors she'd set up, activating the psychic buffers, and the hook up to go with the transmat while the capacitors built up charge. Waiting until they were full to activate the transfer, pressing her lips together as the energy surged through the set up, through Spike and the transmat. Brilliantly lighting up the room, forcing her to shut her eyes until the light faded, hoping that she'd managed to get the device right.

It hurts. It hurts, and Spike wants to scream, but he's too busy with the feeling of muscle under skin, and the *hunger* that's always been so much a part of his existence rising up from his stomach. He forces it down with a thought and staggers to his feet, unbearably grateful for the difficulty of struggling with gravity. "You did it!" He whoops with joy, and grabs Romana in a tight embrace, just for the delight of *touching* someone. "You bloody well did it!"

She laughs, hugging him back a moment before she pushes against him, pulling away, reaching one hand to grab his. "Because I'm brilliant." Ignoring her earlier concerns, only focused on the success of doing something that she didn't think had been done before. "Let's find you a snack, shall we. And then some places far away from Wolfram & Hart."

"You bloody well are," Spike says fervently, squeezing her hand and trying to ignore the *want* in his throat and stomach that months as a ghost had almost allowed him to forget. "Food sounds *brilliant.* So does punching Angelus in the face a few times. Then? I'm all for getting away from Wolfram and Hart."

"Just a quick jump, and I'll put us down in the lobby." Romana grinned, pulling him toward the console room, all but skipping with excitement. Making sure she has her sonic once she's moved the TARDIS, the shield device she'd created earlier now clipped to her belt, activated, in case it helped to prevent her usual muzzy-headedness inside the building.

"Are we here?" Spike asks, all bloodthirsty eagerness for the first time in *years*. He's ready to eat any number of lawyers, and maybe even to throw Angelus out his fancy sun-proofed windows.

"A brief jump through space? Yes, of course we're here." Romana pushed open the doors, her smile sharp-edged and cold. "You find yourself a snack or two, Spike, I'm going to go find someone who can figure out what the bastards did to me when I made a bargain for a little sanctuary."

"You should probably stick close," Spike suggests. "I'm not interested in eating clerks, not at Wolfram and Hart." He grins. "Up to you, though." It's suddenly too much, and he's out the door and away, the joy of actually walking through the corridor's he'd haunted for months sweeping over him. The first person he runs into is someone's secretary, and the sheer delight of the way the smug bastard's expression changes from contempt to surprise to terror is *delightful*. Spike pulls the man close, and the feel of fangs sliding through flesh and into the vein is better than anything he could ever find words for. It's the same with the next one along, and the next, until Spike's almost full and has changed direction, is aiming for Angelus' office, not even bothering to wipe the blood off of his mouth. He's wanted this for *years*, and doesn't even care if he ends up dust because of it -- it'll be *worth* it. When the door in front of him flies open, he's slipping into gameface before he can think.

When he realizes that it's the Great Pouf himself standing in front of him, he just smiles. "Peaches. Guess who's back."

"Spike." Angelus has never been good at facial expressions; still, he's clearly appalled. "You've been killing people."

"I'm a vampire," Spike says, amused. "It's what I do."

"And your soul?"

"Gone. Has been for months, now. Guess you're the only one left in the competition for humanity. Not that I ever really wanted to win anyway. Apparently, it cost a soul to close the Hellmouth."

"You gave up your soul to close the Hellmouth?" Angel says, appalled.

Spike just grins, and licks at the blood at the corner of his mouth. "Well worth it, in my opinion," he says, smirking. "On both counts. The apocalypse was averted, and I'm not stuck with guilt I never really wanted in the first place. Oh, stop looking at me like that," he says, rolling his eyes. "I fought for my soul, remember? If I gave it up for a purpose, so be it. I'm not one for the sort of multiple personalities *you* developed."

* * *

Romana shakes her head, heading for the basement to find herself someone who could help her. She can feel something at the back of her mind, but it's not the all-consuming fog that she's felt before. A grim smile curls her lips, and she flicks through settings on her sonic, aiming it at the door, making sure the thing was unlocked before pushing into the lab. Her eyes scanning over the room, her sonic still held in hand.

"Names, and positions within the firm," she said, the ring of command clear in her voice. "Now."

Wesley had stopped in mid-sentence when the door opened, looking up at the woman who stood in the doorway. He wasn't sure what the weapon she held was, but when she asked for names and positions, he responded almost automatically to the command in her voice. "Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, Head of Research."

"Fred. Well. Winifred, but no one calls me that. And I guess I'm kind of in charge of the science department?" She's mostly got control over the nervous babble, but there's something in this woman's eyes that reminds her all too strongly of Pylea, and when she's afraid, she takes refuge in pointless, distracting words; always has. "We came with Angel, you know, Angel? The new C.E.O.?"

"We've met. I'm rather unhappy that no one bothered to inform me of the change. Not even a message left for me." She changes the settings on the sonic again, and nods toward the door. "Both of you are coming with me. Now."

"Why?" Welsey shiftes, putting himself between the woman and Fred. "What do you want?"

"Answers, and not to be in this building. If you don't come, I will regret turning your insides to jelly, but I'm not feeling particularly generous to employees of this place."

Fred scowls, but comes along as ordered. "We always end up taking the flak for the stuff the last administration did," she sighs. "Come on, Wesley. Angel will explain things, if he even knows the answers. This is worse than the time with the radioactive slug-demons."

* * *

Except that when they get to Angel's office, he and Spike are facing off, and the expression on Angel's face says that something's gone very, very wrong. "Angel?" Fred asks, and realizes part of what it must be when Spike turns partly towards her, smile sliding from homicidal to pleased.

"Fred!" he exclaims, then looks at Wesley, and then at the strange woman, frowning. "Here, I thought you were going to go looking for guilty parties, luv. These two are innocent, at least as far as you and I are concerned." He whips his head around and glares at Angel, who was trying to slide forward. "You. Don't move, or I'll bloody well stake you."

"Spike! You got your body back!" The delighted smile slips off Fred's face. "And your soul's gone. You've got blood --" She gestures.

Spike shrugs. "I won't miss it. Don't worry, pet; still not gonna eat you."

"They were the first ones to get in my way." Romana shrugged, leaning against the doorframe. "And they were in the lab. I expected that perhaps they might assist me in my problem. I don't intend to leave them here." And it wouldn't hurt to have some more company, at least for now.

Wesley has only gone along to keep Fred safe, watching the woman warily. He's not sure if she's insane, or just pissed off, but either way, he won't let her hurt Fred.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010. Unedited.


End file.
